


My Friends Never Die

by LayALioness



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 09:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8157229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: “Do you think they call it safehouse because it’s meant to keep us safe, or do you think they mean it like, the house is the safe and we’re the crown jewels?” Harley asks, running a hand over the espresso machine on the counter. It’s sleek and black, easily the most expensive thing in the house.“I think they call it safehouse but mean it like prison,” Floyd says, not looking up from his chart. He’s making a spreadsheet for house chores, so everyone can contribute to the group. It was only a little surprising, how quickly he went from Deadshot, the faceless assassin, to a mother hen the moment he was placed in charge of five criminals. June suspects it has something to do with the fact that he’s the only one of them who has ever been an actual parent. Maybe once those feelings start, they just never fade away. And since he can only see Zoe for one weekend a month, the rest of the Squad are acting as her surrogates.





	

**Author's Note:**

> here's a playlist for this story: http://8tracks.com/tierannasaurusrex/me-my-friends-we-ll-never-die

June knows they aren’t free, not really, but the safehouse is better than the hotel room where she and Rick were staying, before.

“Do you think they call it _ safehouse _ because it’s meant to keep us safe, or do you think they mean it like, the house is the safe and we’re the crown jewels?” Harley asks, running a hand over the espresso machine on the counter. It’s sleek and black, easily the most expensive thing in the house.

“I think they call it _ safehouse _ but mean it like _ prison _ ,” Floyd says, not looking up from his chart. He’s making a spreadsheet for house chores, so everyone can contribute to the group. It was only a little surprising, how quickly he went from Deadshot, the faceless assassin, to a mother hen the moment he was placed in charge of five criminals. June suspects it has something to do with the fact that he’s the only one of them who has ever been an actual parent. Maybe once those feelings start, they just never fade away. And since he can only see Zoe for one weekend a month, the rest of the Squad are acting as her surrogates.

“Nicest prison I’ve ever been to,” Harley shrugs, strutting around the room, running her hands all over everything. She’s wearing a match set of underwear, because she doesn’t really like to wear clothes, and they all got used to it pretty quickly. It’s hard to fantasize about a girl when they know she’s only the way she is because her ex-boyfriend strapped her down, shot volts of electricity into her brain and then tossed her in a vat of chemicals.

“June,” Floyd waves her over to the table where he’s working, biting the end of his pen and squinting his eyes to see. He probably needs reading glasses. There’s some gray in his beard that wasn’t there before, and he’s been going to bed around nine o’clock.

June sits next to him, leaning over so she can see the spreadsheet. They’re all there, names listed neatly in a row along with the corresponding housework--laundry, dishes, mopping, cleaning the windows. Her name is at the bottom.

“Should I put the Enchantress on here too, or does it not work like that?”

June sits back with a hum, fighting a flinch like she usually does when someone mentions the witch that’s inside her. It’s a nice gesture, she knows, that he’s even asking. But it’s still harrowing, being reminded that her body isn’t her own.

“She might be willing to do little things,” June says, thinking it over. “When she possessed me, for those first few months, I found out she was replacing all the light bulbs when they blew out. She could relight them.”

It’s something that she knows most people don’t really consider. To them, the Enchantress is something like a demon. She exists to possess others, to destroy, to do harm. The only reason Waller let her live at all was because June was able to contain her, in the end.

They all wanted to know how she’d done it, and June told them she didn’t know, but that wasn’t true. The truth was, she hadn’t done much of anything. She’d just asked, and the Enchantress had listened. She always seemed to listen to June.

She liked her. June could feel it, the warmth of love, in the back of her mind where the Enchantress had made her nest. The witch had poked through June’s thoughts and memories, like reading a magazine in her spare time. She had opened up June’s mind and seen what made her _ her _ , and she’d decided she liked her. She trusted her.

And so when June had called out, just a spare thought in the corner of her own body, watching through a window as the Enchantress ripped a hole through the sky-- _ Enchantress, stop. Please. Let me out, and I’ll protect you _ \--the witch had listened.

“I’ll put her down for window duty,” Floyd decides, and goes back to making his chart.

June has been living in the safehouse for two weeks--since everything that happened. She has her own bedroom, the bathroom that she shares with Harley, and a window that overlooks one of the Great Lakes. She isn’t sure where they are, none of them are allowed to know, but she thinks it might be Wisconsin, or maybe Illinois. Geography had always been her best subject in school. If she tried, she could probably figure out their address, just by studying the view.

_ Enchantress _ , she thinks, and feels a slight rustle in her thoughts, like a blanket being pushed back as the witch wakes up.

_ Yes, my pet? _ Without June’s vocal chords to use, the witch’s voice sounds like leaves brushing the ground.

_ Tell me about your past lives, _ June begs, because it’s either this, or she cries herself to sleep again.

In the corner of her mind, the witch preens. _ I was a goddess, _ she says, sort of bragging but mostly just stating a fact. _ They worshiped me. They thought I lived in the stars, but really I lived in the earth. Mothers named their children after me. Fathers sang my name in battle. My brother and I were loved, and feared, by all. _

_ What happened? _ June asks. It isn’t the first time she’s wondered, how the witch could go from a beloved deity, to smoke trapped in a stone doll.

_ Time, _ the witch says, and now she sounds like wind chimes singing in a breeze.

_ Will it happen again? _ June asks, choking on her breath as she thinks it. _ Will someone be able to trap you like before? _

_ Perhaps _ , the witch says, but she doesn’t seem too concerned. June feels phantom fingers brushing her hair back, comforting her. _ But I doubt it would much matter. I could be locked away for another ten thousand years, but eventually I would find release. Immortality is quite the long-lasting curse. _

 

June remembers being afraid, at first. Of the voice inside her head, of the times that she would lose control of her own body, and wake up to find herself sleeping naked on a golf course, or standing barefoot on the edge of a roof.

_ What are you? _ she asked, and the voice inside her laughed. It sounded like hollow reeds on the bank of a river.

_ I am you _ , it said. _ You are me. We are us. _

_ No _ , June argued, and even though she hadn’t said the word out loud, her voice felt raw and scorched, like she’d been screaming. _ No, you’re a monster. _

_ We are all monsters, my dear _ , the voice said. _ You wish to know me? Let me out. Let me show you what we can do. _

June’s knees gave out and she trembled to the floor, covered in black grime and she wasn’t sure how that had gotten there. _ “ _ I’m scared,” she whispered, but the voice could hear that too.

_ Take my hand _ , it said. _ I will be your courage. I will be your strength. When everyone has failed you, left you, turned against you, I will still be here. _

June had spent the last two months pouring through psychology textbooks, seeing doctors and psychiatrists, taking pills and drinking teas and even visiting a shaman, just to cover all her bases. She was so, so sure that the voice was just a fragment of her mind, shattered like glass. She was so sure that she was going crazy.

But then she felt real fingers threading through her own; she closed her eyes and when she opened them, she looked at the reflection in the mirror. It was her own, but twisted into something different, something darker, something ancient. Something that wrenched all the breath from her chest and left her aching with the feel of it.

It would be so easy, she knew, for this to kill her. Just put a glass over the candle of June’s life, and then walk out, no longer having to share her body. June closed her eyes, and waited.

She opened them, and saw herself again, the grime and chains and sparks all gone.

_ Now you know _ , the voice told her, and June was never afraid of the witch again.

 

Chato is sleeping on the couch, because he refuses to take a bedroom.

“If I take a room, and move all my stuff in there, buy posters and furniture, then it means that I’m agreeing to stay,” he explains, when June asks about it.

“But you have to stay regardless,” she points out. “We still have those things in our neck. If we step outside, we die.”

They’ve all tried their hand at dismantling the bombs, of course. Digger has come the closest, taking a toothbrush which Harley helpfully crafted into a prison shank, to his neck. There was a lot of blood, but the implant was too close to his spinal cord to risk doing much, so he got a scar for nothing.

Chato gives her a small smile, like an inside joke. “That kind of thing won’t work on me.”

June thinks back to that night, watching him bloom into something else, to battle Incubus.

“So then why are you still here?”

Chato gives half a shrug, tattoos rippling with the movement. This close to the lamp, the skull printed across his face looks close to glowing. “Where else should I go?” he asks. “But eventually I’ll figure it out, and leave. Until then,” he pats the couch cushion beside him. “I’m good here.”

June tosses and turns that night, until her sheets are tangled up in her legs like ropes and she’s staring at the ceiling, like the answers might be written across the paint there. Even if they were, she wouldn’t be able to see them; she can’t see anything without her glasses.

_ Enchantress? _

The witch slithers out of wherever she’s been hiding, since dinner. She does that sometimes, goes off to be on her own for a while. June isn’t sure what she does when she’s gone. Thinking about her past? Contemplating another attempt at world domination? Mourning her brother?

_ Yes, June? _

The witch never calls June by name unless she’s very, very tired. _ Can you dismantle the implant in my neck? _ June asks. _ So I could leave the safehouse? _

There’s a very long pause, and June wonders if, for the first time, the witch will refuse to answer.

_ Yes _ , she admits.

June rolls over, exhaustion finding her like an old friend late to dinner. _ Alright _ , she decides. She isn’t sure what to do with this information. She’ll figure it out in the morning.

 

Harley wants to throw a party.

It’s not really a surprise, given who she is as a person. Given who she used to be--the Queen of Gotham City.

“We need to liven this place up a little,” she pouts, draping herself over the counter tops as Floyd and Croc do the dishes--Floyd washing and Croc drying. They have a pretty good system.

“This place is already live enough,” Floyd grumbles, aiming a glare at the flatscreen Digger managed to put his boomerang through after a round of Jaeger shots that tasted like diesel fuel, the night before. “I don’t give a damn what kind of monstrosities you want to paint on the walls, or if you want to take apart that ceiling fan and turn it into a car bomb for shits and giggles, or if you want to hang like a bat from the fucking rafters. But they gave us two rules when we got to this place,” He lifts a hand from the sink and ticks the reasons off on sudsy, yellow gloved fingers, “No leaving the premises, and no visitors,” He gives Harley a harsh look. “I know you all might not care about getting out of here, but _ I _ do, so at least for the time being, we’re gonna take all these cards and we’re gonna play them right. Got it?”

“Got it,” Harley whines, propping her chin up on her hand, smudging her lipstick.

“No visitors,” Floyd repeats, just to really drive the point home. “And definitely _ no parties _ .”

“Course not, daddy,” Harley gives a wide grin, showing off her teeth, and then waits until he’s finished with the dishes, washes out the sink with the sprayer, and heads upstairs to bed. Once she hears his bedroom door clicking shut, she turns to the rest of the room. “Alright, let’s start with the guest list.”

“I thought Floyd said no parties,” Digger says, confused, and Harley swats him with a floral dish towel.

“That’s why he’s not invited. _ Obviously _ .”

June perches on one of the wooden stools at the breakfast bar, watching as Harley and Digger pour over the guest list--a scrap sheet of paper from some legal pad they probably filched from Floyd--listing names in bright purple crayon. June isn’t sure where they found that.

The list is fairly extensive; apparently, being a notorious villain gets you a lot of friends.

June peeks over Harley’s pale shoulder and sees _ Rick _ with little waxy hearts doodled all around it, along with a badly drawn flag.

She frowns, takes the crayon from Digger’s hand, and crosses it out. “I don’t want to see him.”

She had, once, after everything was over. He helped her pack up all her things in their shitty hotel room, and had driven her to the safehouse, himself.

When he tried to take her hand, like he’d done so many times, she shifted away, towards the window.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she told him.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, and she shook her head, refusing to look at him. If she looked at him, she might hesitate. She always, _ always _ hesitated, always waited, always caved.

This time she wouldn’t.

“I’m not afraid either,” she lied. She wasn’t afraid for him, and she wasn’t afraid of the witch. She was afraid of herself. She was afraid of June.

She looked in the mirror that morning as she was washing her face, and her reflection was hanging from a noose inside the glass. When she touched the skin around her neck, it was sore.

“I know you are,” Rick said, calling her bluff. “You were screaming in your sleep last night.”

June closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his face. “Maybe, but that’s not what this is about. I just--need some time to myself. And you do, too.”

She heard him swallow, sounding helpless. “So is this a _ break _ , or is it a break _ up _ ?”

“The second one.” She snatched up her bags, and he didn’t try to stop her, as she marched up the front steps to the house. The moment she walked inside, they would implant a chip in her neck, to keep her there indefinitely--and somehow, she felt comforted by that.

“How are you going to get time to yourself when you’re in a house filled with psychos?” Rick asked. “You’re never alone, June.”

“It isn’t the same,” she said, honestly. It had been years since she’d spent any real length of time in one place; she was sort of looking forward to it. To the feeling of being anchored, surrounded by people who knew what she was, what she had inside her, and weren’t frightened. Animals who knew what it was like to be caged. “I’m a psycho, too.”

She watched him drive away from the bathroom window on the first floor, and went in to meet her new housemates.

Harley heaves an enormous sigh, just so June will know she’s extremely put out about this--she and the rest of the squad had gone through battle with Rick, and they’d formed some attachment to him--but she agrees to leave him out.

“He’d probably just narc on us, anyway,” she decides, and adds someone named Ivy, with some plant vines and hearts.

The Joker isn’t on the list, and nobody asks about it. Harley hasn’t mentioned him since his failed attempt at rescuing her. June hadn’t been there, but the others told her everything--how he managed to disengage the bomb in her neck, how she walked towards him with hollow eyes, even as bullets tore through the air around her, how his commandeered helicopter went down in flames less like a sea and more like an earthquake, and Harley wandered back to them after it all, like a lost dog with nowhere to go.

 

In the end, the party happens that next weekend, while Floyd is in Gotham at his daughter’s dance recital. Harley’s been keeping a calender on their shared bathroom wall, leading up to the date.

She sends out invitations earlier that week, on some fancy stationary she sweet talks one of Waller’s men into mailing out for her.

She tells June to _ wear something nice, if that’s possible for you _ , and threatens to skin Digger personally if he so much as even tries to belch the alphabet in the common area.

“We’re gonna be _ classy _ ,” she tells them, and even wears her nicest, least-torn pair of fishnets, to prove it. She makes lattes spiked with cinnamon schnapps for everyone, and sets out some microwaved fish fingers and marinara that Chato has a family recipe for. Croc, meanwhile, sends Waller’s goons to the grocery store with a list of ingredients for some slow-cooked gumbo that he makes on the stove.

Digger doesn’t even put his feet on the table.

Nine o’clock swings around, which is the time that Harley scrawled on all the invitations. Then ten, then eleven, then eleven-thirty and finally there’s a knock on the door.

They’ve pretty much surrendered to the idea that no one is coming, by then. Digger has his feet up on the table--just the small coffee one, covered in ring stains from sweaty cups--he and Croc are channel-flipping on the new flatscreen.

Harley opens the door, and June doesn’t recognize the woman who walks in, with skin painted a pale mint green--or maybe it was dyed that way, like Harley’s. Maybe they met at a support group for people with weird-colored skin.

The woman’s hair is red, the kind of red that doesn’t look natural, even though it matches her eyebrows perfectly. She’s wearing a dress that looks like it’s made out of leaves.

“Nice party,” she says, and it’s a joke but it doesn’t feel mean. Harley loops their arms together, and they look like they fit in a way she and the Joker never did.

“This is Ivy,” she says to the group, and then points them out and introduces them all one by one. “Floyd’s out of town,” she says at the end with a roll of her eyes. “He’s busy being someone else’s daddy.”

“No parental supervision,” Ivy grins with all her teeth. Her lips are lacquered violet, and some of it rubs off when she kisses Harley full on the mouth. Red mixes with purple and it shouldn’t have worked, but did.

Digger has a round of tequila lined up for everyone, in his set of little glass skull-shaped shot glasses that he’s so fond of. Chato is slicing the lemons. Croc changes the channel for good and a bass-heavy song fills up the room, shaking the floorboards under their toes and making their skin buzz.

June doesn’t remember much in the morning.

She wakes up on the floor of Harley’s bedroom, wrapped up in an old blanket that smells like mildew and isn’t hers. The rug is hard and left imprints in her cheek, and she can’t find her glasses. Everything feels blurred around the edges, like a dream, or a memory, and she can’t tell if that’s the hangover speaking or just another aspect of her insanity.

_ You’re just as sane as me _ , the witch tells her, and she moves down June’s spine in a burst of cool mint, like toothpaste, trying to comfort her.

June feels the ache between her legs that comes when the Enchantress moves in her like this, and she should probably do something about that, about the fact that she’s attracted to the spirit possessing her body.

About the fact that she’s half in love with her, too.

Harley is curled up on her mattress, sheets and pillows and teddy bears all in disarray, and June remembers bits and pieces of the night before. She remembers dancing on the counters, to Croc’s loud thumping music; she remembers Chato trying to teach them the salsa; she remembers Digger and Harley getting into some handstand competition, which Harley obviously won; she remembers Harley and Ivy wrapping up in each other, all tangled up on Harley’s bed ripping off clothes with hasty fingers and offering to let June watch.

When June looks back up, Harley’s awake and staring down at her, uncharacteristically quiet, and still. Ivy crawled out through the window that morning and climbed down the hazel tree outside.

“How did you know that you were in love with Mr. J?” June asks. Harley flinches at the sound of his name, and rolls underneath the covers.

Her voice is quiet, like a kid’s. Like she’s that lost dog from five months ago, and not the woman who taught June how to play quarters, the night before.

“I dunno,” she mumbles, voice muffled by her comforter, singed by the sweet-smelling special order cigarettes she smokes at night. “He made me feel--special. Like I was the only thing in his universe. And he was the only thing in mine. Nobody ever did that for me before. He did so much for me.”

“He pushed you in a vat of acid,” June points out, and Harley gives a high pitched giggle.

“Nah, I jumped. I would’ve jumped off a bridge for him. I would’ve jumped off a building, get splatted on the sidewalk.”

“And that’s love?” June pesters. “It has to be all-consuming like that?”

“Love is suicide,” Harley says. “It’s a gun in their hands with one bullet in the chamber and if they pull the trigger, you’re dead.”

“What about Ivy?” June asks, and sees Harley go soft around the edges, smiling less like a puppet and more like a schoolgirl with her first crush.

“You want the truth?” she asks, voice low like a conspiracy, and June nods. “I dunno. I dunno what’s love and what ain’t. Mr. J’s love was like a noose, and when we were apart, the knot kept getting tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe. Ivy--she’s like a blanket or something. Warm and soft, but when she’s gone, I can still breathe, y’know? And maybe that means I don’t love her, or maybe I didn’t love Mr. J. Maybe there are different kinds of love.”

It’s the most sane June has ever seen her. Harley watches the ceiling as she speaks, and plays with the ends of her hair, gone pale pink and baby blue from the wash. She’ll have to redye them soon.

Harley rolls over and grins down at her. “Mimosas for breakfast?”

The bell rings as they head downstairs, freezing on the first step at the sound. No one’s ever rung the bell before. It sounds like a sitcom prop.

Croc goes to answer, which is maybe not the best idea, but it happens anyway. If it’s their neighbors with a casserole, they might have a mess on their porch.

But it isn’t the neighbors; Katana stands on their doorstep, suitcase in hand.

One of Waller’s men is at her side, and he shrugs helplessly. “She didn’t have anywhere else to go, so they transferred her here.” He turned to the swordswoman. “Welcome to your new home.”

She ignores him and walks inside, marching upstairs without a word, shouldering past Harley and June on the way.

“She’s a regular Chatty Kathy,” Harley rolls her eyes, flashes a wink at the guardsman, and continues on into the kitchen, in search of orange juice and champagne.

Katana makes her roost up in the attic, and the floors must be thin because they can hear her moving the furniture around, making herself comfortable. Or as comfortable as she can, at least.

June absently wonders about the sword. She’s heard the others talk about it; it traps the souls of its victims, apparently. Everything about it puts her archeological nerves on edge. She can’t help the budding curiosity, the same kind of feeling she got whenever she boarded a plane for somewhere new.

_ I can find out, _ the witch offers. _ I can ask it about all its secrets. It will tell me. We are similar, after all. _

June thanks her, but declines. _ Maybe later _ . For now, she was hungry for something greasy and bad for her, that might take the edge off her hangover.

She’s halfway through her plate of scrambled eggs when Floyd gets back. He takes one look at the state of the house--shot glasses and puddles of spilled alcohol and fallen party streamers that Ivy brought and pillows and forgotten food everywhere--and then sees Katana staring down at him from the stairs.

“What the _ fuck _ .”

“We saved you a mimosa?” Harley tries, and Floyd shoots her a glare for her trouble.

 

June watches the seasons change from inside the house.

Ivy starts to sneak in on a regular basis, and sometimes she brings them all gifts. Beaded jewelry and bootlegged copies of the new releases and Sudoku books for Katana and strange shiny rocks for Digger and _ Playboy _ ’s for Croc and a tearaway jumpsuit for Chato--”For when you feel like you might go up in flames again,” she explains--and some kids’ books for Floyd and an atlas for June.

“Harley must have told you a lot about us,” June muses, tracing the spine of the book. It isn’t new, but she prefers that.

“Of course,” Ivy shrugs, the pale green of her skin looking ghostly in the low light. “You’re her family.”

Time moves slowly when you’re trapped inside four walls.

The leaves change, and then fall off, and Ivy arrives with an armful of pumpkins she must have coaxed from one of the farms nearby. June knows they’re in farm country because she can smell it, whenever she opens the windows. The smell of wheat and corn and cows.

They carve the pumpkins on the tiled kitchen floor--Floyd makes them put down some newspaper, but it doesn’t do much. The whole ordeal is already messy, but made worse when Digger and Harley start throwing handfuls of gooey orange guts at each other, slick and slimy on their cheeks and down the sides of their necks as the rest of them get caught in the crossfire.

Floyd collects up the seeds and rinses them, brushes them with some cinnamon mixture, and then roasts them in the oven. They taste like autumn on June’s tongue.

Waller’s men let them go outside to set up their pumpkins along the sidewalk. They’re mostly normal-looking, with Croc’s being the exception, as he carved his to look like a butt.

They find out there’s a pond nearby. Croc can smell the water, and it starts making him anxious.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had open water,” he whines. He lives in the basement, and there’s a claw foot tub down there that he’ll fill with cold water and soak in for hours. “It isn’t the same.”

Harley and Floyd talk their guards into letting them go on a field trip.

Waller’s men have to do something to their implants, stretching out the radius of their freedom, but only a little. Baby steps.

The pond is a good size, and it’s a little chilly, but--with the exception of Floyd and Katana--it’s the first time they’ve been outside in _ months _ , nearly a year, and they can’t help but enjoy it.

They have a competition to see who can make the best cannonball, and of course the boys win; they’re just so much bigger.

But June does talk the witch into letting her levitate a little above the water, which gets some loud cheers. Waller’s men look a little sick, though. Like they think she might snap their necks with a thought.

She could, if she wanted to. The witch would, if June asked. It would be nothing, to her. Toothpicks between her teeth.

They walk back to the house before sundown, and soak the sofa and the easy chairs and the rug as they sprawl out like cats, to dry.

The first sign of frost comes that night, spreading lace over the windows.

They’ll have to get the extra blankets from the trunk upstairs, the one that Katana covered with her collection of trench coats. June starts to shiver, under her sheet.

_ Let me warm you _ , the witch says, voice like warm bath water down June’s spine, soothing on her muscles.

June thinks back to what Harley said, how Ivy’s love was a blanket, soft and warm. She takes a breath and holds it. “Okay.”

She feels the witch’s fingers thread through her own, just for a second, and then her body isn’t her own anymore. The Enchantress is at the control panel, making her hand drift down her body, light as spider legs, grazing the skin of her belly, and inner thighs.

_ I’ll make it so good for you, _ the witch promises, and June believes her.

She touches all over, like she’s mapping out routes. _ I have waited so long _ , the witch says. _ I have wanted so long. _

“I wish I could kiss you,” June whispers, and now the touches feel like kisses, soft and light over her chest, her neck, her ribcage.

_ You are the only taste I want to know _ , the witch tells her, and she makes June come with her own hand, back bowed and chest aching, like she’s been split open for the world to see.

June spends the next day jittery and anxious, the witch a pleasant constant hum in the back of her mind, until the sun sets and she practically runs upstairs, so the witch can finger-fuck her in the shower.

_ Next time, it will be my mouth _ , the witch says, and June whines against the curtain.

 

Katana cries herself to sleep every night. They all pretend they didn’t hear it, the next morning, but the floors are thin and the attic echoes.

June finds her sitting on the stairs more often than not; it was just another aspect of life that they all got used to. Harley likes to steal their shoelaces to wear as chokers around her neck; Floyd gets annoyed by toothpaste left in the sink; Croc takes the longest time in the bathroom; Chato sleeps on the couch; June talks to herself; Digger keeps his empty beer cans to build towers of aluminum in his room. And Katana likes to sit on the stairs, so they learned to step around her.

June sits down beside her, and studies the puzzle she’s working on. She’s never been as good at Sudoku as she wanted to be.

“I think a nine might go there,” she says, and hears the witch laugh at her. “Well we can’t all be ancient all-knowing deities,” she snaps, and Katana eyes her suspiciously. “Sorry. Just talking to the voice inside my head.”

It’s a running joke between them all; loony June, who can be found scolding or laughing or muttering to herself at any point in time. She asked Floyd once, if he thought she was crazy, and he just looked at her over the rim of his glasses, and said “Don’t you have a voice in your head to get back to?”

“I’m sorry about your husband,” June tries, and Katana bristles.

“I am sorry about the demon inside of you,” she says. It’s the first thing she’s ever said to June.

_ What did she just call me? _ the witch demands, outraged, and June tries to think soothing thoughts.

“Actually, she’s an ancient Mayan deity,” June tells her, but Katana only shrugs. “Katana--”

“Tatsu,” she cuts her off. “My name is not _ Katana _ . It is Tatsu.”

“Oh,” June blinks. “Okay, well, Tatsu, we’re all here for the same reason.”

Tatsu sniffs, indignant. “I am not a criminal.”

“Neither am I,” June points out. After all, the only crimes committed by her body were done by the witch. “That’s not what I meant. We’re all here because the world doesn’t know what else to do with us.”

Tatsu stays quiet, but she doesn’t get up to leave, which seems like a good sign, so June keeps going.

“When the witch possessed me, I thought I was going crazy. I thought it was all in my head, the symptom of some brain tumor or something. And more than anything else, I thought I was all on my own.”

She reaches to lay a hand over Tatsu’s, where it rests in her lap.

“But I wasn’t alone. I’m still not alone. And neither are you.”

There’s a pause, and then Tatsu says “Seven.”

“What?”

She points to the square in her puzzle. “Not nine. Seven.”

The witch laughs.

 

On Christmas Eve, June walks out to find Chato moving his things into the last bedroom.

“What’s this?” she asks, poking a toe at a rolled up movie poster he’s leaned against the wall. It’s for something called _ Lords of Salem _ .

“A poster,” he says unhelpfully, and she shoots him a look.

“What happened to leaving?”

Chato tips his head back and closes his eyes. This room has a sky light, and right now he’s bathed in a patch of sun, like some Greek Renaissance statue. “I’m good here,” he decides, and June knows exactly what he means.

That night, Ivy shows up with a present for Harley. It’s a tattoo kit, and she’s very excited.

“We’re all getting matching tattoos!” she crows, over the buzz of the metal gun.

“No the fuck we’re not,” Floyd tells her, crossing his arms in a very final sort of way.

But of course they do.

June brushes the skin under the fresh ink on her shoulder. SKWAD blinks back at her in crooked black letters, Harley’s handwriting. The same letters on Floyd’s knuckles glare back at her from across the room.

“We’re going to have to get creative with you,” she tells Chato, whose skin is nearly completely covered up in ink all ready, and he grins.

Waller’s men had delivered a Christmas tree--a real one, that made the room smell like a forest--earlier that week, and they’d spent a whole day decorating it with strings of old shitty popcorn and plastic wrapped candy canes. There weren’t any presents underneath it; they’d all agreed not to do gifts. It wasn’t like they could order things on Amazon, or go shopping at the local mall, anyway.

But it was still nice, having a tree. Having some spicy eggnog that Floyd made on the stove, before he had to get ready to go see his daughter. Having a real family holiday, no matter how fucked up that family may be.

June stumbled upstairs to collapse in her bed, head feeling light and airy from the bourbon in Floyd’s _ secret recipe _ . None of them could keep a secret for very long, not even June. She’d spilled Tatsu’s real name within the day.

“But I’m keeping you,” June told the witch, who was stretched out cozily across her mind. “I won’t share you. You’re mine, and no one else’s.”

_ I am yours _ , the witch agrees, and June still wasn’t sure if she was _ in _ love with her, but she did love her, and that was enough.

The alcohol is making her sleepy, but June tries to fight it off. “You could go anywhere, you know. You could leave me and find a different body. A better one. You could be free again.”

_ They have my heart _ , the witch points out.

“We both know you don’t really need that,” June says, and feels the witch sigh, like a breeze against her thoughts.

_ I could leave _ , she agrees. _ But I will not, unless you ask me to. _

“Why?” June asks, muzzily, eyes drifting shut.

_ Because this is home _ , the witch says, and June likes the sound of it.

“Home,” she agrees, and the witch tucks her into a dream.


End file.
